3D-Printed Weapons & the Consequences

At-home 3D printing is on the rise, and what was once just a lofty promise is now a reality. More and more hobbyists are acquiring affordable printers, such as the Makerbot Replicator 2 and the RapMan Universal 3D (single/dual head) printer, to manufacture just about everything from toys to working clocks.

Some hobbyists have used these printers for fast-prototyping items that are controversial -- or even deadly. It comes as no surprise that some would attempt to replicate weapons systems (or at least parts of them) in an effort to create a fully functional gun. It's not exactly clear who was the first to fabricate a firearm using a 3D printer, but one example that has garnered global attention is "Have Blue," who designed an AR-15 lower receiver (converted to fire .22 ammunition), using a CAD file in the SolidWorks file format that is openly available from CNC Gunsmithing.

Have Blue's 3D-printed converted AR-15.(Source: Defense Distributed)

After a few modifications to the original file, he set to work fabricating the receiver using around $30 of ABS filament fed through his Stratasys printer. After prototyping a small-scale model, he fabricated the full-size receiver and used it to fire 200 rounds without catastrophic failure. The proof of concept of manufacturing a 3D-printed weapon was a complete success. Now the door is open for others to try their hand at the home weapons manufacturing business.

A group of hobbyists (most of them college students) have banded together to form a company known as Defense Distributed to expand on the 3D-printed weapons systems and provide open-source software to anyone who wants it. Defense Distributed began its quest with the Wiki Weapon Project, which aims to provide all the necessary CAD software for manufacturing plastic firearms using any 3D printer. The group expanded on Have Blue's AR-15 to prove the concept of building weapons with a printer. However, instead of testing Have Blue's .22 conversion build, the group went ahead with an AR-15 conversion in 5.7x28FN, which has more firepower than a .22 but provides less pressure than the standard .223 round.

The group printed the lower receiver using Objet ABS-like filament piped through a Connex 3D printer. The printed rifle fired six shots before breaking. Apparently, the receiver's threads couldn't handle the pressure and snapped at the buffer-tube connection. The group is now looking for funding and a federal firearms license to get its project off the ground.

The problems with 3D-printed firearms aren't limited to catastrophic failure. (It takes only one bullet to kill.) There is also the issue of legality. No federal laws address manufacturing weapons with 3D printers, so anyone owning a printer could make a weapon -- even if they're not allowed to own one. The ATF considers the rifle's lower receiver as the firearm; anyone can purchase the upper receiver, barrel, etc.

The 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act prohibits the manufacturing or possession of guns that can't be picked up by airport metal detectors. This creates a loophole for hobbyists. Firearms typically require metal parts (barrel, springs, bolt, etc.) to function, and those parts can be detected. However, some companies don't want to take any chances. Defense Distributed's first attempt at funding in September through Indiegogo ended in disaster; Indiegogo froze DD's account and sent the $20,000 it raised back to the backers. In October, Stratasys terminated the group's 3D printer lease and seized the equipment from a member's home.

Like it or not, the seed of printing weapons has been planted, and the idea is sure to gain momentum through hobbyists in the near future -- until federal laws are enacted to gain control over the issue. It's only a matter of time before a printed weapon is used in a crime. Then all hell will break loose.

Weapons have several uses: hunting, exercising terror & compulsion over others (by government and lone or organized sociopaths), and defense against the latter and tyranny by freedom-loving individuals. None of these is going to change by hysterically banning printed weapons.

No, I'm not happy that people will be able to make their own guns that much more easily. But what is by far, the most disturbing is the KIND of weapons that can be easily fabricated. Assault, fully automatic, melee, even ultra-high capacity magazines for existing weapons. All the illegal stuff. This isn't funny. And the difficulty in preventing the proliferation of proven, working designs is spine-chilling. Trivialize this at the risk of real mayhem.

If this was sooo boring perhaps yourself and the 250 friends you have so kindly spoken for should have been inteligent enough to stop reading. more over you continued to waste your time writing a rant about afformentioned boring article.

3d printing is on the verge to becoming one of the next big revolutions in prototyping and manufacturing, get used to hearing about it!

My first reaction to this article and many of the comments are impolite and unprintable. Let's start, then, with a few basics of firearms. Even the lowly .22 cartridge requires a metal chamber and barrel to contain the heat and pressure of the propellant gasses, and centerfire rifle and pistol cartridges even more so. Engineers, do the math! Chamber pressures range from 40,000 to 80,000 pounds per quare inch (psi), and the temperature of the expanding gasses is on the order of 2100 degrees Kelvin. Simply put, an "all-plastic" gun would instantly and catastrophically fail. What the author and makers have failed to to disclose is precisely how much metal is actually employed, and where it is--e.g. the chamber, barrel and breach. All firearms require high-strength steels to conatin the pressures and temperatures of the cartridge--this is an incontrovertible fact. The discussion of "plastic guns" concerns only the fabrication of what is often termed "the furniture". I do realize that that the "lower reciever" is the part recognized to constitute the "firearm", but this was the invention of idiotic bureaucrats in an era of all-metal guns. The minimally-structural lower reciver that merely supports a fully-structural barrel/reciever/breach appears to be the "invention" of record. This is truly much ado about nothing. As an aside, I would be interested to see a demonstration of a 100% printed gun (behind a shield, of course)!

I don't want to trivialize the effects of gun violence, but printing assault weapons won't flood the streets with weapons of mass destruction. Any citizen can go to the hardware store right now and get everything they need to make slew of pipe bombs and cause some serious mayhem. The REAL cause of violence isn't the availability of weapons, but the social, economic, and mental health factors that make people behave violently. Any serious effort to control gun violence (or any other type) should worry less about the availability of weapons and more about the root causes.

Well put. I agree completely with the ridiculousness of the upper/lower receiver distinction. My hunch is that this developed from the fact that, in many cases, the lower receiver controls the rate of fire (full vs. semi automatic) which was used as the distinction between "legitimate" firearms and assault rifles. Obviously this definition is somewhat flawed.

I agree Dave - hubby grew up in West Texas where every home had fire arms. Children were taught gun safety at an early age and no one ever heard of anyone getting shot. If you needed to kill a stray coyote attacking the herd - you had a solution.

I just can't imagine a criminal bent on violence taking the time, effort and expense to fabricate a gun when they are so easily accessible otherwise. I am not even sure why you would want to go through all that trouble legally as a hobby - just go down to your local Cabellas - they have a fine selection of used rifles and shotguns out on the sales floor that you can walk up to and play with. I even saw an M-1 Garand there a couple of weeks ago...

I've been working with this technology since the late 1990's mostly in automotive at the time but it was a fast way to find interferance fits and other anomolies when designing vehicles. At the time it was abs plastics but today, you can print in ceramics and even metals. A gun made with ceramics can effectively meet the standards used for normal firearms and with the use of minimal amounts of metals if any at all. These have been demonstrated as being able to pass through security devices with out issue. My concern would not befor the commercial use of these but the illicut intentitional use of such weapons and the govt, needs to react to this quickly and be ahead of the curve for a change. This is a change this world DOES NOT NEED.

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